Sandcastles on Sunshine Beach

I grew up designing sandcastles on Sunshine Beach, elaborate multi-levelled miniature mansions complete with mock infinity pools and moats, roof top terraces and basement carparks, who knew in a few decades time I would be renovating some of the very coastal homes I’d watch being designed and built as a boy. I was raised at the north end of Sunshine Beach on Seaview Tce surrounded by dilapidated fibro beach shacks and the occasional Architecturally designed wonder- mostly the celebrated work of Sunshine Coast Architect Gabriel Poole – I grew up admiring Mr Poole for filling my neighbourhood with interesting artefacts, roof lines and materials I hadn’t previously witnessed being used in new and innovative ways, even as a boy though I sceptically questioned the longevity of his canvas roof prototypes. I have watched empty sand dunes gradually sold off and transformed into a sea of yellow, blue and white boxes; assorted attempts at occupying the shore, many unsuccessfully I might add. I’ve witnessed pairs of perfectly nice beach houses less than a decade old razed to scorched earth only to be replaced with a giant 8.5 m high white box of mediocrity which smothers both blocks and over shadows its neighbours all the while I am sure proclaiming to be sustainable via some bizarre logic. I am yet to make my own lasting mark on Sunshine Beach, the few projects I have completed there so far have been either heavily dictated by clients or merely tiny interventions barely noticeable from the exterior. I am drawn to this area and even though the land values have skyrocketed in recent years I still retain a lofty ambition of designing and building my own beach house here on the Sunshine Coast one day.

“I was raised at the north end of Sunshine Beach on Seaview Tce surrounded by dilapidated fibro beach shacks and the occasional Architecturally designed wonder -mostly the work of celebrated Sunshine Coast Architect Gabriel Poole”